Technology has provided increasingly sophisticated tools that allow a content consumer to experience multimedia presentations. A typical consumer has access to interactive multimedia experiences via numerous devices. A user may have experiences with interactive multimedia presentation devices that present one or more of images, video, sound or text. As computing technology has become more ubiquitous, consumers have begun to hear and see the output of electronic media files in many new places. Some of these places include for example the consumer's home, office, and vehicle.
In addition to the revolution that has brought the experience of multimedia to the consumer via numerous devices, there has been a similar revolution in the creation and capture of images, sounds, text and video for media presentations. While many content capture tools continue to require expensive equipment and sophisticated training, simple tools to capture or create media such as images, videos, text and sounds have become available to users.
While simple tools to capture media have become available, tools to combine media such as images, video, and audio files in order to generate and modify multimedia presentations have remained expensive and difficult to use. Management of multimedia presentations requires expensive equipment and training for administrators and users.
Since the advent of the Internet the notion of content and presentation creation and distribution has evolved. In music production, video production, and text creation, it is now accepted that content creation includes not only recording images, animation, video, and sound, but also may include the arrangement and annotation of pre-existing content or the combination of pre-existing content and newly generated content. Unfortunately, the tools that are available for presentation creation have not advanced to the stage of allowing individuals to efficiently create rich and customizable multimedia presentations.
In the context of content generated to support an interactive presentation experience, the generation of multimedia presentations including interrelated and customizable content may greatly improve the experience of the content consumers. A presentation creator is a person or entity that generates a presentation for guiding the experience of a presentation consumer. Often the presentation creator is also the presenter of the presentation. In such cases, the presentation creator is available for guiding the presentation consumer's experience. This guidance may be provided in a variety of forums, for example in an in-person meeting, via video conference, an internet session, audio conference or via other means that allow the presenter to respond to situations, questions, and other opportunities for an interactive experience on the part of the presentation consumer. Sessions involving the ability of the presenter to respond to such presentation consumer interactions will be referred to herein as live sessions.
Frequently, the presenter does not or cannot attend live sessions with the presentation consumer. This may be due, for example, to issues such as the cost of bringing the presenter together with the presentation consumer, schedule conflicts between the presenter and the individual who wishes to experience the presentation, travel on either the presenter's or the presentation consumer's part, etc. In cases in which a live session between the presenter and the presentation consumer are not possible, the presenter sometimes provides the presentation consumer with verbal, written, drawn or other information on one or more sessions that the presentation consumer may experience without the presence of the presenter.
The typical result of the presenter's inability to attend a live session with the presentation consumer (or group of consumers) is a mixture of frustration on the presenter's part regarding the presenter's effort to create and deliver the presentation in a timely, efficient, and clear manner. The presentation consumer must then experience the presentation that is assembled from a multitude of poorly integrated media, for example: written notes, emails, sketches, photos images, and the like. Often when the presentation consumer has to attempt to understand the presenter's instructions and intentions without the benefit of the presenter's presence and the interactivity that the presenter's presence provides the presentation consumer also experiences similar frustration. Presenters lack tools that enable them to conveniently create interactive presentations that presentation consumers may utilize outside of live sessions. Presentation consumers thus lack an easy to use and follow solution.
In addition to the difficulties of providing interactivity efficiently to presentation consumers, there are additional difficulties for a presenter who wishes to monetize his or her presentations. When such a presenter is limited in his or her ability to present interactive presentations outside of live sessions, he or she is typically income limited. That is, a presentation professional's income is usually limited to the number of presentation hours that can be provided in a day, multiplied by the number of days in the week, weeks in the month, and months of the year. While the intention of the presentation professional is to improve the experience of his or her presentation consumers, they are essentially “stuck” with a cap on his or her income based on his or her ability to provide live sessions.
Tools to distribute multimedia files remain difficult to customize and lack the flexibility necessary to provide a strong presentation experience to presentation consumers. Presentation creators interested in sharing multimedia files typically lack distribution tools. Multimedia presentation distribution is performed in a variety of manners, including emailing files, posting media files on web sites or bulletin boards, or simply using postal mail to send digital files recorded on CD, DVD, flash card or similar file storage technology.